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Monday, May 6, 2013

More on Boston 2013.. and some thoughts on 2014 too

Three weeks since the dastardly event at this year's Boston marathon while the perpetrators have been identified the motivation behind this is still unclear. And those directly impacted by the blasts are still trying to cope with it. The week of 16th April was a a horrible week for the running world and runners worldwide. While I was relieved to know that runners from India (a couple of whom I knew personally) were safe I went about my work almost like a zombie - some colleagues at work wondered why was I was off-colour and distraught. Among the several reflections about Boston 2013 here are some that I found interesting:

One aftermath of Boston 2013 is that there is huge interest in qualifying for Boston 2014 - apparently the interest is about 15 to 20 times higher than at any point since 2008.The 118th Boston Marathon is slated for Monday, April 21, 2014. Quoting from this article: 'In recent years, about 27,000 people have been granted entry to the race (through qualified entries, charity entries and sponsor’s exempt entries), but only 22,000 typically start the race. But several thousand are also turned away each year once the race reaches its capacity.'

So there is expected to be a surge in marathon entries over the next several months as runners try to register a 2014 qualifying time before registration opens in early September.As per the analysis hereOf the 17,580 finishers of Boston 2013 , according to MarathonGuide.com, 10,391 runners, or 59.1%, qualified for Boston 2014. And a large number of these qualifiers would likely want to come back and run Boston 2014. Also BAA needs to decide how to handle the 4,496 runners who were unable to complete the race due to the blasts. With a time of 2 minutes 40 seconds under the qualifying time of 3:40 (achieved in SCMM 2013) my chances of getting through in the registration process in September 2013 now looks quite challenging. Unless BAA decides to expand the field of runners in 2014 - which they did before for the 100th anniversary run. I am hoping and praying that they do this. It will be very disappointing if I am unable to make it for Boston 2014. The Hyderabad marathon at the end of August is the only one I plan to run before September and it is highly unlikely that I will be able to better my 3:37:20 on that course. Anxiously counting down the next four months...